NaBloPoMo 2014: Day 22 "Cabaret Crazed"

Tonight, tonight, tonight!

It was Cabaret Night - and it was everything I dreamed it would be. (Almost perfect, close enough!)

We raised millions of won in funds, (!!!) served a 3-course dessert menu with wine, and sang and danced our hearts out.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

CROWDZZZ

Over 100 ppl...

"Cry Me A River"

"When You're Good To Mama" as a duet

"All I Care About Is Love" - I'm in the top left corner ;), Adam's face is bottom right

Glamorous Songstresses

"Cell Block Tango" gang - I'm the blonde Hungarian Hunyak

"Uh-uh"

"He had it comin'..."

"It was a murder, but not a crime!"

"We Both Reached For The Gun" - me as puppet Roxie Hart, Adam as Billy Flynn

"Oh yes oh yes oh yes they both..."

"Money Makes The World Go Around" - from Cabaret

Lisa as Liza and me as Joel Gray

My favorite - Pulling money from our brassieres and working hard for the won

"Money money money money..."

Us, shimmying thru the crowd collecting money and banging a cowbell every time we got a bill

GPP President's thank you speech

La Presidentia

"All That Jazz" FINALE!

It was over too soon, and not nearly soon enough!

Waiting to go on

Photo booth fun with "Mona Lipschitz" from Cell Block Tango (aka, Boipelo!)

My two Jeongs: Sujeong and Hyojeong

BEST FASCINATOR OF THE NIGHT AWARD, goes to Stephanie, my coworker

The gorgeous hosts and Cabaret Directors! Heather & Julien

Billy Flynn with some ladies ;)

Pre-creepy make-up

Being attacked by a loveable Hyo Monster

Heart lips! Scary eyes! Goodnight everyone!

Enough. Bed beckons alluringly.

CARPE CABARET, forever and ever.

SQUATS: No
SPLITS: No
BOOKS: No
WATER: Yes

NaBloPoMo 2014: Day 10 "Aim High"

THE THEATRE, THE THEATRE! VIVA LA VIE BOHEME!

You guys, I get to perform onstage this month. :D The GPP is holding a "Cabaret Dessert Night" fundraiser (to pay for the theater space rental for Proof, our upcoming play) on November 22nd, and I'm so stoked about it. I'm in THREE numbers!

I'll be puppet-acting the role of Roxie Hart from "We Both Reached for the Gun", from Chicago, and my hilarious and talented Hubby will be Billy Flynn:

I'm butchering Hungarian as the Hunyak in "The Cell Block Tango", also from Chicago:

And I'm goofing off as Liza's partner Joel Grey in "Money Money" from Cabaret (the movie):

Photos will be posted after the event, but I just wanted you all to join me in my excitement and nervousness. It's happy nervousness, but nonetheless...

As of today, we already have 41 tickets sold out of 100 possible tickets, which is pretty darn good when you consider that each ticket costs about $20.  !!!!!!

Carpe diem, seize the stage!

SQUATS: 105, DONE.
SPLITS: 2:30 on each leg
BOOKS: I made good progress in Dubliners today! On story #4, Eveline.

NaBloPoMo 2014: Day 7 "Baby Boss: The Director"

My previous post about leadership woes was all truth, but only half of it.

I'm planning to go into business for myself in the future. That's a heckuva lot of leadership I'm looking at, and appropriately, it feels like this year has been baby boss boot camp.

I've learned a ridiculous amount of skills in the past 11 months.

 I directed and produced my first ever full-length play. ...In a foreign country. I assembled a team, ran auditions, chose a cast, organized rehearsals, booked a theater, advertised, got the whole play translated and projected as subtitles, painted and decorated our beautiful set, stuck to a budget, and in the end put on a show that I am extremely proud of. Everyone who came had a great time, and were impressed with the production value. I had some amazing people working on this show, and they were my sanity, along with Adam. Because I also had some occasionally frustrating people working on this show, and they regularly tested my patience and afore-mentioned sanity.

My assistant director Heather was my lifeline. I can't imagine putting it on without her.

Opening night!

There were some members of my cast whose unfailing optimism, positive attitudes and hard work were what kept me smiling in rehearsals. And there were some whose insecurities, wretched line memorization skills, and emotional ups and downs kept me on my toes and taught me there are depths of patience previously unreached to Anna-kind. I also got better (somewhat) at recognizing needs, and encouraging my actors in ways that actually made a difference in their performances.

I got better at not taking it personally. I learned new strategies for responding to emotional crises. Problem-solving skills were taken to new heights. I fell in love with theatre all over again. I fell out of love with it, a little, too. I was eating, sleeping, dreaming Rumors (the play), and yet still handled my work life, planned a killer surprise party for my husband, and didn't completely abandon social life outside of the theater. :)

The best part? I found that I was more than strong enough to handle all the work and frustrations and stress. Finding that strength was exhilarating. Like when you sign up for an advanced class, but you're not sure you'll be able to catch up and get a good grade, and then you ace it in the end. Or you try out for something and you're up against a lot of other talent, but you nail it. That kind of exhilaration, but on a subtle, spread-out way.

I'd do it all again, for sure.

One of our early rehearsals

Reahearsing, pre-theater

Laura as Officer Welch

Rachel as Chris Gorman

Joey as Ernie Cusack and Jess as Claire Ganz

Relja as Lenny Ganz (middle left) and Elizabeth as Cookie Cusack (middle right)

Billie as Ken Gorman

Justin as Glenn Cooper and Susie as Cassie Cooper

Lindsay as Officer Pudney and Anissa, our ever-cheerful swing as Myra Brock/Chris Gorman

Hilarity

construction begins

Our all-around handy-man and Lighting Designer Jonty and our amazing Set Designer and Carpenter, Scott

The lovely sound lady, Kate - she had a ridiculous number of cues and nailed them every night

Working hard....

...and hardly working. ^^

director stuff: texting while painting!

Backstage: Why are you looking at your lines, still??

Carpe diem, world!

SQUATS: Done, I'm at 80 already! Woot.
SPLITS: I actually did them today, 1 minute 30 seconds on each leg.
BOOKS: Still reading - finished the first short story in Dubliners, halfway through the second.

NaBloPoMo: Day 16 "Goals: Addendum"

Ok, I don't have a lot of time, because Adam is sitting in the next room with wine and Agents of Shield cued up, just WAITING for me to come join him. And holding the wine hostage. >:(

I realized today that I left out a major section of my goals in my previous posts: Korean goals in Korea.

1. Create and design a middle school curriculum. There's a large project I'm working on with several other ESL teachers here in Gwangju to create a curriculum for middle school ESL teachers in our particular program, EPIK. A lot of new teachers (myself and Adam included) get thrown into middle schools with Korea co-teachers who hand us the middle school textbooks and say "You can use these if you want. Or not. Do you like them? I don't like them. You can just do whatever you think is helpful for the students..."  And after looking at the first couple pages of the available textbooks, I have to agree that they are the opposite of compelling for a middle school student. So, I (and most other middle school ESL teachers) attempt to do... whatever I feel is useful. This leads, inevitably, to unequal lesson quality throughout the middle schools of the city (and country). And this is what our determined little group wants to change.

We've been working diligently (usually) on the project for about a year, now, and we are a couple days away from finishing grade 1 of the curriculum (or, 7th grade). Exciting and daunting and time consuming, I'm personally committed to seeing this project through to completion before leaving. I have confidence it CAN be done, but after next month, we'll have (or won't have) assurance from the Gwangju Office of Education that they'll fund the remainder of the project, which will be (HOPEFULLY, CROSS EVERY FINGER AND TOE) a huge relief and motivating factor.

2. Lead a local theatre company. In the past 1.5 years, I've participated in two theater shows put on by the Gwangju Performance Project, which was started and run by other ESL teachers for the past 4-ish years. Next year, however, the entire leadership group is leaving Korea. They've decided they'd like yours truly to be the next GPP coordinator/leader/director, and so I'll be initiating and running the show (ha, literally) starting next March. This is much scarier than the textbook project, but also waaaayyy more exciting, in many ways. I've already got a play in mind for next spring, but I'll keep you posted.

3. Be proud of Adam. This isn't a goal, but I just want to brag a little on my husband. There's a local magazine here in Gwangju that has a pretty significant readership throughout the whole country. He started out volunteering to write articles here and there, and then was quickly promoted to the Online Editor. And now... there are rumors of bigger and better things in the works.

He's awesome. You can check out the online version of the magazine here!

AAHH! Adam's starting the show without meeeeeeeeee....

Carpe November!

P.S. Abs & squats, CHECK -- rest day!
Minimalism, CHECK. Another non-challenge day, another day of uploading pics and pics and pics to my online cloud.